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Dessert

Author's Frosting

A clear, thick syrup made from powdered sugar and boiling water, folded into beaten egg whites and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 53,532 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Author's Frosting

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. Combine powdered sugar and boiling water in a saucepan.

  2. Boil the mixture for 25 minutes until it becomes a clear, thick syrup.

Finish the frosting

  1. Pour the syrup over the well-beaten egg whites.

  2. Beat the mixture hard until it cools down.

  3. When nearly cold, add the juice of one lemon.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  2. Egg + lemontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  3. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Powdered sugar
Dissolves into the syrup to provide sweetness and the frosting's body.
Egg whites
Whipped into a foam that gives the frosting its light, airy structure.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and helps keep the foam stable.

The step that matters

Beating the hot syrup into the egg whites. The hot syrup partly cooks the egg white proteins, so beating must continue steadily while it cools. If beating pauses, the whites can set in lumps instead of a smooth, glossy frosting.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, egg):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits about as well
  3. Lemonthe original
  4. Datesfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, egg. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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